Introduction
Long term care is a looming, unpleasant prospect for many folks who are retired. In nearly 25 years of doing my job, I’ve had lots of conversations about it, and lots has changed in that time, and not necessarily for the better.
None of us likes to think of the prospect of not being able to look after ourselves. It honestly does feel like we come full circle, from being dependent on our parents, to being fully independent as adults, only to become dependent on others again as our health fails.
But many of you reading this will be thinking about this already, and many more will be approaching this stage for your parents, and as much as we’d like not to think about it, we do need to be prepared for action if the time comes.
Care Needs are a Spectrum
The first thing to know is that when we talk about long-term care, we’re not just talking about residential care in a care home. There’s a lot more between that and being fully able; between fully able and needing round-the-clock care in a facility of some kind. There’s lots of shades of grey between those two extremes. Many people choose to receive care at home for as long as they can, for the obvious reasons.
There is also an important distinction between your reasons for needing care. If your needs are primarily medical, then the NHS may provide some or all of your care free of charge under its continuing healthcare (CHC) scheme.
Or, if your care needs are largely down to physical frailty – inability to dress, wash, go to the loo or feed yourself, then those usually would not be covered by CHC. If your needs are a combination of both medical and physical, then CHC may contribute towards your costs – the medical side of things. There may also be provision for equipping your home with items that make life easier like stairlifts or bathroom aids or whatever.
Care Funding System
Now the care funding system is a bit of a minefield, as you might expect, and again, it depends what it is that you need. If you need any kind of care, you can request a financial assessment from your local authority. Responsibility for providing care and assessing your eligibility for it falls to your Local Authority.
I don’t know for sure, but I imagine there’s something of a postcode lottery here, because not all local services are of the same quality. But put simply, if you have more than £23,250 in assets, including your home, you will pay the full cost of any care yourself, and will receive no help from the LA.
If your assets are below £23,250 and more than £14,250 your income from pensions etc will be used towards your care costs, plus an amount from your capital, called tariff income. If your total assets fall below £14,250 – the cost of your care will be borne by the LA. Note that these figures are slightly higher if you live in the UK outside England.
As you can imagine, anyone owning their own home is going to be way over the upper limit and is going to be responsible for paying their own care, even if they don’t have many other assets. It may be that they need to sell their home to pay for residential care costs, or they could stay at home and do an equity release, perhaps to release the money to adapt the home or whatever, although that may cause difficulties.
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